People Change
by RayWritesThings
Summary: Sometimes, people grow into the marks their soulmates have been given to find them. / Soulmate AU, for Lauriver Week Day 4 Prompt Fill


**Hello, and apologies as I was too busy to share this prompt fill for Lauriver Week on its actual day, so this is coming a bit late. Regardless, I hope you enjoy, and I'll be uploading another chapter of a fic (not for the week, but still very much Lauriver) to make up for it shortly. Thanks for reading!**

**-RayWritesThings**

**People Change**

Some called them birthmarks and nothing more. Others thought their significance stretched far beyond that. Religions and romantics alike drew upon these symbols for many different meanings; a higher calling, a message or even a sign of the one thing or person who might complete you.

With the rise of love stories popularized in ever more widely circulated media, a name emerged for these blemishes almost every person in the world was born with on the inside of their wrists: soulmate marks.

Some laughed them off. Others adhered strictly to them, trying to divine their true meaning and what that said about the person they were meant to seek out.

In the 80s, a popular trend became giving children wristbands that covered the mark, keeping it special and secret to all but a trusted few. One such set of parents to go along with the trend were Quentin and Dinah Lance; the former liked the idea of protecting his daughters while the latter enjoyed the mystery and romance of it all. Laurel and Sara were each told only to reveal their marks to a trusted few.

Of course, the sisters reacted in equal and opposite ways.

Laurel dutifully wore the wristband and told no one of her mark. The truth was, she didn't know what to make of the shape on her wrist. What did an arrowhead have to do with anyone in this day and age, apart from perhaps someone on the archery team at school? Laurel didn't really hang around with anyone on their school team; she liked her friends and, later, her boyfriend. Laurel kept her mark to herself even from him and didn't ask for his own. She didn't want to make it sound like she was interested in someone else, convinced as she was that she and Oliver had a future together.

Sara took her wristband off often to admire the pretty band that swirled around her wrist. As she grew older, she imagined it to be a silken tie, the kind her sister's boyfriend might one day wear once he took over his parents' company. She needled at him to show her his mark at a party one night when they were both drunk, and delighted in seeing the dark imprint of a bird mid-flight . Sara was surer than ever of what it had to mean, and so she agreed without hesitation when Oliver invited her aboard his father's boat behind her sister's back.

"Laurel's gonna kill me," she remarked in the cabin one night. "But we're soulmates, so what can she do?"

Oliver froze, lifting himself off of her. "What do you mean?"

"Our marks are for each other, Ollie. I had that bird as a kid and you—"

"That's not — I didn't ask you to hookup because of some soulmate thing. I just—"

There was a tremendous crash and boom from the storm outside, and the yacht was torn apart.

Two years later, Sara found herself with a new name, _The Canary._ Her rescuer was a woman with the faint outline of a bird with talons outstretched. Nyssa wove silken scarves with delicate and powerful precision, swirling around Sara and drawing her in.

"My father does not believe in such things," Nyssa told her one night as they lay curled around each other in her bed. "But the moment I saw you, it was as if I had discovered something missing in myself." Nyssa was always saying overwhelming stuff like that. Sara just kissed her; she didn't know how else to express the gratitude she felt towards this woman, the one spot of good left in her screwed up life.

She'd been wrong, and yet, it had led her right in the end. She just wished it hadn't come with all the pain and regret. Would Laurel ever forgive her? Had she found some inner peace with a soulmate of her own?

Laurel numbed herself to everything for five years. The last thing on her mind was soulmates, and she kept the wristband more out of habit than anything else. She slept with Tommy because it was the safe option; he'd never expect anything more than some sex, so who cared?

After five years of feeling at her absolute lowest, two things happened that upended her life once again. The first was Oliver's return, bringing with it all the messy feelings she had tried to repress for half a decade.

The second was the emergence of a man who suddenly brought an unprecedented amount of relevance to the symbol on her wrist.

They called him the Hood. In the space of two weeks, he attacked two of the billionaires she had been attempting to prosecute in court. She told herself it was a coincidence. They were high-profile cases. They didn't have to do with her precisely.

Then he showed up in her apartment, and it seemed it maybe did have to do with her after all.

In the dark, she seemed to sense more than see his presence in the room. The hairs on the back of her neck prickled when he spoke behind her, and her nerves tingled and came alive when he placed his hand over hers to lower the gun she had taken out of her desk.

Did he know somehow? Was this why he was coming to her out of all the lawyers in this city? She'd always been so careful to not show anyone. Who could he even be and why had he shown up now?

But he made no mention of marks. Instead he just appealed to the common desire they had of helping the people in this city. Laurel forced her questions aside and got to work.

Her second visit to Peter Declan in Iron Heights turned into a disaster when a riot started, and only the Hood's arrival saved them. She was forced to pull him away from beating a man to death, meeting blue eyes for a single instant that seemed clouded over in fear and rage. Yet they still struck her as familiar somehow. Was she supposed to feel this way?

Outside, her father was there, and she threw herself into his arms. "Are you alright? How'd you get out of there?"

"It was the Hood. He- He would've killed that man for me. But he stopped for me, too…" She didn't know what to feel about what the Hood had almost done. He'd been wild and almost unreachable, but the man he would have killed had held her down and nearly choked the life from her.

Her father's brow creased. "Laurel, tell me you're not thinking—"

He knew her mark, of course, had seen it in the hospital when she'd been born and probably half a dozen times after that besides. She couldn't exactly hide that from him.

"I'm not thinking anything. It's never mattered to me." At least not before a literal guardian angel personifying her very mark showed up. It was just confusing. Especially when she still didn't know how to feel about Oliver.

And that made everything weirder when her dad arrested Oliver for being the Hood. And then Oliver asked for her to represent him.

She nearly didn't go. This all had to be some joke he was playing on her because he knew — maybe he'd peeked one of the nights they'd curled up asleep in bed together. But if he did know, and it _was_ him…

So she went and eyed him all through the hearing and the polygraph test. Her suspicions of him increased but her lingering resentment fell away after hearing just a brief summary of the events he endured. He'd been tortured. For how long? And how had he survived it?

Laurel went to the Queen Manor that very night, hoping to speak to him, to express the new understanding she thought she held. And maybe, just maybe, to ask if he really did know. But then she got distracted by his scars and his story, finding herself in his arms and kissing him like she used to, like a part of her still longed for.

Laurel pulled away and ran the minute her brain caught up with her. What had she been thinking? Whether she had feelings or not, whether her mark was pointing straight at him or not, whether that meant soulmates or not — she couldn't just _do_ that. Right?

Not without some serious ground rules. Laurel puzzled over the results of Oliver's polygraph most of the night. He'd been at home when the Hood had appeared to stop the arms deal, but that waver on the question about Iron Heights that didn't quite count as a lie but indicated _some_ kind of hidden truth… she wasn't ready to give up the idea that he and the Hood really _were_ the same person. And if they were, then something in the universe apparently thought she needed to be a part of that.

She thought again of the man he'd nearly killed, how he had only stopped when she'd pulled his arm back. If the Hood really was going to save this city, she wanted to help him. She wanted to reach him. But she could only really do that if she knew who he was.

So she returned to Oliver's home the very next day, armed with a polygraph year and her wristband. She tried asking him first, seeing if he might open up on his own. Quite the opposite happened.

"If others knew — if _you_ knew — You'd see me differently. And not as some... Vigilante guy. As damaged."

She shook her head, her eyes feeling heavy with tears she was forcing herself to hold back. He was pushing her away. Should she really go through with this if he didn't want her help?

Then again, it might just be that he didn't think he _should_ have her help. She didn't want to be left wondering which it was. So she took a breath and readied herself for a metaphorical plunge.

"After last night, it's clear we're still attracted to one another." She waited for his nod. "Oliver, nothing can ever happen between us… because I've found my soulmate."

By the widening of his eyes, she could tell this was both a shock and of more than just a casual interest to him. Okay. She'd thrown down the gauntlet. Time to see if he'd pick it up.

Oliver wasn't sure what he'd expected Laurel to do or say when he denied her assertion that he could still somehow be the Hood, but this wasn't it.

Soulmates. He'd thought Laurel didn't put too much stock in those stories, that she covered the mark on her wrist just to avoid people prying. Oliver had always been fine with that before the island, because somebody declaring herself to be his soulmate would have been the deepest kind of commitment he could have imagined.

He'd obeyed his parents' instructions to keep his own mark covered as an extra form of insurance. Many people would like to be able to pass themselves off as the soulmate to the heir of a vast fortune, after all. Best not to hand the information to them.

Had he wondered about his mark? Of course, but in an idle way. Even on the island, it had felt small and insignificant next to the worries he'd had about Laurel, his family and his friends. Some of the people he'd met there had seen it once his old wristband had grown too tattered and torn to be of much use. Slade, before he had become an enemy, had once asked him about his 'birdie', as the ASIS man had put it. Oliver had answered truthfully that he hadn't a clue. The bird on his wrist was perhaps always meant to be flying away from him, just like Laurel was just about to walk right out of his life to her own happily ever after.

Oliver realized Laurel was still waiting on some kind of response to her statement. He licked his lips and asked, "You- you did?"

"Yeah." She gave a shrug, like it was just a casual fact.

Oliver grit his teeth. He knew asking would make him sound interested, if not outright jealous. But she had to know he still cared for her. She wanted him to ask. "Do I know him?"

"You might. That's kind of the thing," she hedged, her weight shifting slightly as she fingered the strap of her bag. "I've only found him a couple of times. I haven't had the chance to talk to him about it, and I don't know that I will."

Oliver blinked. "Well, why not just go see him?"

"Oh, I tried." Something about her tone raised the hairs on his neck. She was angling at something. He just wasn't sure what. "But he's kind of more the type that finds you, I guess."

If anything, that caused him more concern. Clearly this wasn't about what had happened between her and Tommy. So then who was acting this way towards her? "Laurel, if you need some kind of help to, to find him or make some kind of decision…"

"That's kind of you to offer, but I don't think you can help, Ollie." Laurel turned and headed towards the door, looking back over her shoulder with her hand on the doorknob. "After all, you're not the Hood."

"What?" He'd been under the assumption these two conversations were unrelated, and Laurel's reminder of his lie threw him.

"You heard me. But maybe this will clear things up." Laurel turned fully back around towards him, working the wristband she'd always worn off her left wrist and letting it fall to the floor. Oliver swallowed and came forward, staring at the exposed skin and the mark he'd never seen before.

But it was a symbol he was acutely familiar with.

"I guess that's why I needed to ask you. Just to put it all behind me for good," Laurel was saying. He tore his eyes from the little arrowhead and found her still staring at it, not looking up at him.

"So that you can be with him," he summarized, feeling a dull pounding start up in his temple. He'd thought to hurt her briefly with the lie in the short term in order to keep her safe, but Laurel was all but admitting she planned to pursue his alter ego for the rest of her life, which meant he would have to keep hurting her by pushing her away. And he thought she knew it, too, or at the very least was banking on it.

"Laurel, look at me." When she did, he was proven right by the exaggerated innocence in her eyes. "You would become an accomplice to the Hood's crimes."

"I became an accomplice the minute I agreed to help with the Peter Declan case instead of phoning the police. The people he interrogated, the men he hurt in Iron Heights, I could have helped stop all that from happening," she pointed out. Then she took a step forward. "But I also would have condemned an innocent man to death. Maybe it's extreme, but the lengths the Hood goes to in order to bring justice back into this city, it's something I believe in. Damaged or not, I believe in you, Ollie."

He looked away. He couldn't believe how earnestly willing Laurel was to give him another chance. "If we're — I hurt my soulmate in the worst way possible. That's what that symbol means." His own symbol was something he still didn't understand, but he couldn't be her soulmate without her being his. He didn't want to live in a world where that was somehow a possibility.

"Or it means we weren't ready yet. We weren't the people we were supposed to be. Maybe we are now." She took his hands, and he couldn't bring himself to pull away no matter how much he thought it would be for her own good. "I'm not saying we rush into something. But I know where I need to be, and that's helping the city by your side. Okay?"

He couldn't speak, so he nodded. A wave of relief seemed to crash over him in that instant; he didn't have to lie to her anymore. Oliver squeezed her hands and brought them up to his lips, trying to impress upon her everything he was feeling but couldn't say.

When they met with Diggle at the base, Laurel made it quite clear just how literal she'd meant _by his side._ "Where did you get this made?" She asked, fingering the sleeve of his suit. He was thankful she hadn't grabbed for the hood, whether that was intentional on her part or not.

"Why? You shopping around?" Digg asked with amusement.

"Something like that. Though I wouldn't go green… maybe black or gray, some kind of mix—"

Oliver stepped in right away. "Laurel, you can't go out there and fight. It's too dangerous."

She frowned at him. "How else am I supposed to help, then? I know I'm not up to par or anything, but I've got two experienced teachers here," she said, nodding to each of them. "And I'll look around for other lessons on my own time if I have to."

He shook his head. "If I lose you out there—"

"—is a very real possibility for me when it comes to you. You can't expect me to sit at home while you're out there risking your life, Oliver. That's not the kind of girl I am."

"It'd be a good idea to start her on training regardless, Oliver," Diggle agreed, much to his annoyance. "She's been attacked more than once since this whole thing started."

"Alright," he gave in, watching the two of them share a smug smirk. "But this is not going to be easy. If I'm preparing you, I'm preparing you for the worst, because that's what's out there." He couldn't afford to hold back, even with her.

Laurel, for her part, took to the training far more enthusiastically than he had on the island. She was always ready to jump back up from the mats when she got knocked down, always bringing her fists or a stick back up. He hadn't seen her so energized and simply _living_ since he'd gotten on that stupid yacht.

"They'll say things about you," he cautioned her one night over a reheated meal home cooked by Raisa. Oliver was glad for the training in part simply because it meant he made sure Laurel had something other than takeout and coffee in her system. It occurred to him that maybe their relationship wasn't beneficial in only one direction. "The media, your father."

"I'm sure whatever he comes up with won't be worse than anything he's already said," she replied matter-of-factly. "Sticks and stones."

"I'm sorry he treated you that way."

She waved her fork as if to brush the subject aside. "The one thing I want to be sure of is to get ahead of them before they start just calling me 'the Woman' because they will absolutely do that if left to their own devices. And I don't want to just be defined by that."

He supposed that was fair. "Alright, then what do you want to be called?"

She sat up, pushing her travel bowl aside. "Well, I've been thinking about Sara, and how I, I want to do something besides feeling this anger and sadness in me. I have to accept that she's gone and that — for everything that happened — she was my sister. I want to honor her, like you do with Shado and her father."

He'd started telling her small things about the island. Mostly the better things; he wasn't ready to get into the truly awful. Shado and Yao Fei teaching him archery, and his hood having originally belonged to them, was one of those memories he'd shared.

He waited for Laurel to speak again, knowing she needed the room to talk this out. "And I thought about it and thought about it, and I think I know something that would do that without making it totally obvious to my father or someone else. You remember when we were kids, and my dad got Sara that canary as a pet?"

Oliver froze. "Yeah?"

"Well, it's been years and I doubt he really thinks about it anymore — I have the only picture of it. But it makes me think of her, so… what do you think?" Laurel's tentative smile faded as the moment stretched on. "Ollie?"

He blinked, finding his eyes to be wetter than usual. "Um, yeah. It's fine. I just…" He looked down at his covered wrist. Laurel still hadn't asked to see it. But he took the wristband off now and flipped his arm over to show her.

Her eyes went wide. "But—"

"I never really knew what to make of it," he told her. "And with you giving me this chance, I was ready to say it didn't matter. But I guess you were right about us having to become the people we are now. It was always you."

Laurel released a breath, a smile spreading over her face, and Oliver found himself kissing her before he could stop himself. But Laurel's hands held his face and her lips moved against his, so it seemed they'd both agreed to move things a little faster than they'd originally intended.

They broke apart, both smiling now, and Laurel whispered in the space between them, "My Arrow." There was something about that, her giving him her own name, that felt far warmer and special than anything else.

"My Pretty Bird," he answered back. Then their lips met once again.

No matter how twisted a path it had taken to get here, he and Laurel had found each other again. If that wasn't what soulmates were, he wasn't sure he'd ever understand the concept. But he was happy enough with his life as it was.


End file.
